Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/298

 284 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The Tuskegee spirit hovers over not only the great school, but over the home and field of labor of every graduate, and 1 believe that in twenty years from now the mental, moral, and physical condition of the southern negro will be more indebted to the spirit set free at Tuskegee by Booker T. Washington than to all the material equipment at that center of industry and learning. GEORGE EMORY FELLOWS.

The Democratic Principle and Socialism. All social movements are efforts to realize social ideals. These social ideals tend more and more to converge in our age in the democratic ideal of government of the people by the people. This ideal, usually thought of in its political aspects exclusively, finds its economic manifestation in socialism. What political democracy represents in the socialization of political office for the control of the state, socialism represents in the socialization of the means of production and exchange for the control of labor.

Three important criticisms have been made upon political democracy, viz. : (l) that it reduces sovereignty and political power to a mere matter of number, bringing the intelligent and the stupid to the same degree of influence ; (2) that it weakens official responsibility by distributing offices, causing private and temporary interests to displace public and permanent interests ; (3) that democracy, being the sovereignty of mere numbers, becomes oppressive of minorities, and degenerates into Jacobinism.

An examination of the usual criticisms directed against socialism as the "social- ization of the means of production and exchange" reveals the fact that such criticisms- are fundamentally the same as those commonly brought against political democracy. In summary they are that the socialist organization for the elimination of inequality of con- ditions and suppression of the anarchy of capitalistic production takes the ownership and control of the means of production and exchange away from individuals and places it in the hands of the people and their elected representatives, and therefore reduces responsibility and establishes the tyranny of number.

But wherefore this "therefore " ? As far as political democracy is concerned, the whole history of modern civilization seems to be an increasing assertion that the appli- cation of the principle of government of all by all is the only means of securing ade- quate responsibility in the management of public affairs. On the economic side " private " business is becoming more and more a public trust, the manager being to an increasing extent necessarily responsible to the whole body of the people. Why, then, should a deliberate effort to get this fact realized in law, so as to reduce irregu- larities and confusion in production and distribution, and prevent capital from main- taining a vicious " privateness " in its operations, be stigmatized as a reduction of responsibility and the establishment of the tyranny of numbers ? It is only with the widest extension of the area of responsibility that we get any certain guarantee of the efficiency and justice of conduct.

Socialism cannot and should not hope to remove the element of individuality from industry and from life. And the critical and important point in socialism is the place which it accords to the realization of responsibility and freedom. The commun- ist formula, " To each according to his need, from each according to his ability," offers no way of realizing itself, and reduces freedom and responsibility, i. e., individuality, from the economic standpoint, to a minimum. The collectivist formula, "To each according to his labor" (i. e., time of labor), still does not fully realize the socialist principle of equality. Collectivism is obliged to interpret its formula to read, "To each according to the results of his labor." In this statement the principle of individuality appears still more prominently. In all these contemporary movements the point of departure is equality ; the growing ideal, individual freedom.

Believing that freedom comes only through intimate union and common, mutual, responsibility, socialism is learning to condemn the futile practices of violent revolu- tion, and to advocate the gradual and considered establishment of industry upon the principles of a thoroughly democratic state. JOSEPH SORRANTE, " Le principe ddmocratique et le socialisme," in La Revue socialiste, March, 1900.

The Protection of Those Willing to Work. That many willing and able workmen surfer severely in the development of modern industry from the sense of insecurity of employment and from unjust and arbitrary discharge no one acquainted with